Toy guns are common with children and provide excitement of playing out the hunting and the hunted or shooting targets. Traditional toy gun resembles a real gun and projects a fake bullet at relatively high speed. This type of toy gun is very dangerous to play with as the projectile can severely injure a child, in particular, his/her eyes. Furthermore, bullets are often lost after shooting from the gun and require constant replenishment or reloading.
In view of the increase in gun violence in today's society, traditional toy guns have been considered politically incorrect and parents minimize their children's exposure to toy guns. Due to the decrease in popularity of toy guns with a projectile, toy water guns have increased their popularity in recent years.
Prior art toy water gun uses water and projects a squirt or stream of water. Toy water gun is slightly less dangerous to play with and does not cause severe injury, but does cause a mess if used indoors. Similar to a traditional toy gun that projects a fake bullet, the water ammunition is lost after shooting and requires constant refill. Furthermore, water toy gun is very messy and essentially played outdoors only.
Another type of safe toy gun is one that shoots a ball or wave of air. A toy air gun is advantageous over traditional and water toy guns because it is safe to play with, does not cause severe injury, no need to refill ammunition during play and it is not messy to use.
Prior art toy air guns generally use a resilient diaphragm that is drawn and cocked rearward and released (e.g. U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,157,703, 2,846,996 and 2,614,551) or is struck with a hammer (e.g. U.S. Pat. No. 3,117,567) to provide a puff of air at relatively high velocity to be felt many feet away. Disadvantageously, all prior art air toy guns have bulky constructions due to the many intricate parts that make up the toy guns and are expensive to manufacture and ship due to their sizes.
Therefore, there is a need for a toy air gun that is inexpensive to manufacture, easy to use, ship and assemble.